I took advantage of a window of free time to get up to a backyard backcountry zone that I frequent in Odgen, Utah. I live near the base of a trailhead that gets me access to skiing these ridges with just an hour and a half hiking on a trail. There is also pretty easy access from Snowbasin, but when my schedule requires much earlier starts I often tour this zone from Ogden City access. The Northern Wasatch has been getting some storms to stick recently so I hiked up to see how things are setting up.
Around the World in 18 days
This was the trip of a lifetime. I literally traveled all the way around the world in 18 days. Even in the midst of the trip I could not believe how blessed I was to be embarking on it. Total route started with Salt Lake City to Honolulu for a couple days. Next, it was on to Tokyo and a bullet train to Kyoto. Another train back to Tokyo and off to a layover in Bangkok on the way to Milan for a week in the Italian Alps. Finally, then back to the U.S.A into Chicago by way of New York and Detroit for a celebration, and finally coming to a rest back in Salt Lake City. All in a total of eighteen days. However, by now I am rather late in completing this post. The pictures have sat in the post for weeks now. I was supposed to have completed it a long time ago. When I got home from the trip I was eager to write about the adventures. However, fate took a turn on me. Literally when I was at this computer having just pasted in the pictures when my wife, Christine, called from the doctor's office where our young son Amos was in for an appointment about some small red dots on his chest, being really sleepy all day, and restless at night. She picked me up, lap top still open on the desk with this post on it, and we rushed down to Primary Children's hospital at the request of his pediatrician. For nearly three weeks, this post sat unfinished, while we waited for that diagnosis. Amos has recently, as of the time of this now completed post, been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. It is called Acute Monoblastic Leukemia. For a few weeks I could not even think about trying to relive this trip in order to write about it here. The words would not come to me. All I could think of was my son. However, Amos recently began chemotherapy, and he has been improving each day. We are almost a month into the ordeal by now and my wife, Christine, and I are starting to get used to what our lives are going to look like fighting this war with him. We are settling into taking each battle one at a time. We are getting used to our emotions floating right at the surface. I have always been a spiritual and emotional guy that lives with great appreciation for everything that has come my way. Once I was able to wrap my head around my son's situation the words began to come back to me. The trip began to come back to me. My appreciation seemed to be coming back to me in abundance as a result of Amos' improving health. He shut down for a while, but lately every time he cracks a rare smile it is like the greatest gift I have received. His first giggle in nearly a month was like a ray of sunshine busting over a mountain ridge at sunrise. The recollections of this trip began to come back like the waves crashing on the beach in Hawaii, which was stop number one on the adventure.
Big Spring
As my previous posts have mentioned, the finish of my winter into spring skiing season has been a sincerely appreciated adventure due to the grind-it-out nature of my life and the whirlwind of new fatherhood recently. My mantra coming out of that fog was, "It's gonna be a big spring." So far, it has been.
^Sunrise over a local favorite backcountry zone, and
Emergence From the Fog
I have had a baby boy. I have nearly finished a full gut and remodel of our new home. I worked my night job at Delta Airlines. I have entertained guests. I have worked on projects for Telemark Skier magazine. I have worked on projects for Vertical Integration. I have done a whole lot of everything recently... except skiing. My life had gotten so busy that at two different points in this winter I went without a ski day for long periods of time. I missed all of October, November and December in the first push, and then half of January and all of February in the second push. To most, this is no big deal. However, for me, it was a painful sacrifice to make. All that said, the sacrifice has paid off.
Solo For the Soul
I have been amidst the darkness of the vortex of an unbeknownst level of labor. I have lived an entire life of jumping into things over my head and beyond my scope of realization of exactly what I am in for. However, as before I wallowed through the valley of the shadows of ridiculousness and emerged on the other side a better man as a result of the journey. I was remodeling a home on a nearly impossibly ambitious timeline, and learning to be a father to a brand new baby boy. My absence in postings to this website is just one of the many indicators of my absence from reality and daily life. I will explain all of that in a different post on here when I finally finish the remodel to a showroom status. As for now I will just say I went to a dark place, grew a large beard, camped out in a construction site, and lived to tell the story. As a reward to myself my lovely wife acknowledged my efforts and allowed my to travel half way across the globe to my happy powder place, Niseko, Japan. I went solo for the soul. No big cameras, no magazine projects, no athletes, filmers, or photographers. Just me, and the journey laying out in front of me.
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